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Tuesday, 26 November 2013

Ten more days to go until the closure of kickstarter campaign, Guido Henkel's (Realms of Arkania (Das Schwarze Auge), Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2) and Marian Arnold's (Divine Divinity) upcoming-if-funded computer role-playing game Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore received a new "pitch video" today for the campaign. Anyone who isn't yet familiar with the game yet, or is still considering to back it, should check the new pitch video out at Deathfire kickstarter page! The game is also up for voting at Steam Greenlight, 73% of the way to the Top 100, so you can check it out on Steam Community as well and vote for the game.

For those who don't know, Deathfire will be first-person party-based fantasy role-playing game for PC with Windows or Linux, and Mac OSX, featuring a single-player campaign with deep story, and hearkening back to the nineties and late-eighties computer role-playing games, such as Might & Magic, Wizardry, Realms of Arkania: Shadows Over Riva and such - or reminding a bit of the newer one, Grimrock, with a difference, that Deathfire won't be only a dungeon-crawler, but it will mix dungeon-areas with outside areas, too, to offer bit more exploration and environmental variation.

If you're just tired of level-grinding monsters in today's computer role-playing games, without narrative edge of things, interactive party, and a good story, then this is a game which should definitely deserve a few minutes of your time!

The campaign has currently 3000 backers with 10 days to go, which in my opinion is criminally low amount for a solid pitch, with great ideas, so give Guido Henkel and Marian Arnold some help and check their project out! This is a game that has to be made, to be one of the upcoming greats along with: Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, and Torment: Tides of Numenera (and it should appeal also to fans of those games).

Also, you can view my more in-depth look into the Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore at this article:

(And here's some music from cRPG Realms of Arkania III (Das Schwarze Auge): Shadows Over Riva. Composed by Guido Henkel. Brings back some good memories out of character creation! You can order this and parts I+II at GOG, as directly playable digital downloads)

Thursday, 21 November 2013

Guido Henkel has recently started a kickstarter project to fund his new fantasy-based cRPG called Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore. The game currently seems to be set on sword-and-sorcery flavored setting, and it's being developed for PC, Mac OSX and Linux. The budget that he and his team are asking for is rather moderate $390 000, compared to some other recent cRPGs on kickstarter, such as Project Eternity and Wasteland 2 (to mention a few which asked around a million on their initial plea, ending way beyond few millions at the end). The lowest tier to buy the game (digitally) is currently $25 (as early bird editions are already sold out), and you can get development forum access for $5. The project has 15 days to go out of the initial 30, so anything's still possible, even though they are currently under $100 000 funded. The project seems quite promising to be honest, so check it out! If successfully funded, Deathfire will be made by Henkel's lead with his team G3Studios.

(An early peek to one of the game's dungeons)

Henkel has kept rather quiet profile about himself, compared to many other game developers. He is multi-talented guy, who has capabilities of working with games as designer, producer, developer, composer, even as an artist (although about the last one I'm personally not sure to which degree, professionally). Henkel is best known of being one of the original formers of Dragonware Games in 1983 (German game development company, which made text-based adventure games for home computers at the time), which later on led to shape into Attic Entertainment Software at the end of the decade. At those days, Henkel was influenced by "Das Schwarze Auge" pen-and-paper role-playing game, once he tried playing it in a group and got hooked. This led him to start working with computer role-playing game based on DSA universe and rules, eventually releasing three titles of cRPGs based on DSA setting. German titles of these computer role-playing games (parts I - III) were soon translated to what we today know as Realms of Arkania. Henkel was co-creator of the cRPG franchise, doing multiple tasks from development to composing and story-writing, having a major role in completion of all of those games. Later on Henkel also worked with few other games, such as a producer for Planescape: Torment,and what I understand is, that he had a smaller supportive role with development team of Fallout 2. Henkel has actually quite surprisingly long history with computer role-playing games, and his games have always had that depth that seems to be lacking these days with most of the games (Hint: you can also read my older article for more about Henkel's background: "Famous people in gaming industry - chapter #1: Jon Van Caneghem, Peter Molyneux, Guido Henkel. 14.02.2012. And my mini-interview with Guido Henkel. 15.04.2012.). Along with Henkel, G3Studios also have Marian Arnold working on the game as a Lead Character Artist, who's known of working with Attic in their later days, and also with Larian Studios (creators of Divine Divinity).

(Guido Henkel)

(Marian Arnold)

Deathfire, what kind of a game is it?

It will be first-person party-based computer role-playing game (got to love these long terms!) set in sword-and-sorcery-flavored game world (not based on DnD, Die Schwarze Auge, or any existing ruleset), but seems to be taking a slightly darker visual approach. An old-school approach so to say! It's being developed for PC, Mac OSX and Linux and will use Unity 3D engine (popular these days), which makes it possible for a non-AAA (commercial big budget) game to look rather impressive, visually appealing, and be less time-consuming to develop, similarly. That is the core. Other things may still chance, for the game is still very early on it's development, and I'm quite certain fan / funder opinions are asked during the development, as well.

(an early outside-view)

In Deathfire, you'll be able to create a party of four heroes (and recruit additional two NPCs) with rather in-depth character-creation process, including choices of six races, eight classes, and 34 traits (or skills) for each character. The story is not quite revealed yet, but it has something to do with a nethermancer raising from dead causing trouble. Henkel has hinted that there is reason why it is indeed a nethermancer, not a necromancer, but it will be a surprise for now. A Nethermancer, to my knowledge, has an ability to twist, form, and access different dimensions of the world, perhaps the story will involve something supernatural. The story and it's dialogue will also be a major part in the game (as it should be in a cRPG!). There will be different factions in the game (not sure if able to join or not?), whereas you will sometimes have to choose the side to evolve with the story and see consequences of your choices.

(Character creation. Stats-screen)

The game is set to be first-person view, and combat will be handled in first-person view, as well, using turn-based system, which will allow much deeper tactical planning, than a real-time counterpart would. Movement in first-person view at this point is planned to be grid-based, although there may be filters on the final version to make the "step-engine" less visible. Henkel has stated that isometric grid-based tactical combat view would be interesting, but budget of $390 000 wouldn't just allow to create such element to the game. Still, first-person turn-based has worked fine before on several dungeon-crawlers. Deathfire will have it's own recipe-based crafting and enchanting system, and the game will also let you combine some items to build weapons, or perhaps traps to set against monsters (Henkel promises "tons of monsters" to combat).

So, will Deathfire be a dungeon crawler, too? Kickstarter project introduction video stated that Deathfire will not be "just" a pure dungeon crawler (in veins of Dungeon Master etc.). It will fall somewhere in-between a dungeoncrawler and open-world cRPG, perhaps nodding more towards the first mentioned (as your path will be more limited than open, most likely). What we know so far is, that free exploration of the whole world will not be possible at once, and by any route of your liking, but Deathfire will contain both, outside and inside areas connecting to each others at their end. What those outside areas are, we don't yet know. Personally I'm hoping for larger areas connecting to each other such as: dungeons, canyons, forest-paths, ruins, to get the immersion of adventuring and exploration. But we'll see. Deathfire will involve several puzzles and evolving quests, so at times, you will need to keep your mind sharp! It's also not certain at this point, whether the game will have a city of any kind for bartering and such or not (it certainly would make the game more impressive in my opinion). Also, loot system to me is yet not clear, but I'm betting for random loot-system, since you're able to discover and combine several items to make weapons and traps. The game should avoid the feeling of being closed-in dungeon-crawler by adding outside areas (whatever they are) to the mix, which should add variety of different episodes and events possible to be added to the game, and perhaps adding a slight element of freedom to explore and discover (depending of how big the outside areas are).

(Early example of dialogue-based encounter in dungeon)

What would a true cRPG be without a living, interacting party? Henkel promises, that in Deathfire, your party of four (+2 optional NPCs) will converse and interact with each other. In addition to their actual skills, characters have "hidden skills", which at this point have something to do with their personalities. Some party members may like each other, while the others may hate specific characters. Things may get heated and if certain party-member for example disagrees with another too many times, he may even leave the party. This personality-and-interaction-system will be handled by what Henkel calls "Psycho Engine", which keeps track of disagreements and such events. It's not yet explained how deep this character interaction will go yet, but they will have conversations with each others, have their own opinions, and it should go beyond what I just explained as an example. Different characters will have their unique personalities, and Henkel wants to make your party-characters to feel as much charismatic as live players in table-top role-playing event, as it's just humanly possible. Each of your characters will have their own negative traits, such as: Fear of Death, Claustrophobia, Greed, Temper, to name a few. Disadvantages are familiar from Realms Of Arkania series, and will give their own unique touch to characters personalities. After all, they are all just living beings, so why wouldn't they have fears too? A character who doesn't like tight places, may eventually freak out in a dungeon level, as well as someone with Fear Of Death may chicken out against the undead. It remains interesting to see how far Henkel can take party interaction, as he has already mentioned that during times when Attic created Realms Of Arkania games, they wanted to take the system deeper than what actually ended in the game, but computer hardware wasn't just powerful and evolved enough at the time to meet the requirements to do so (a shout for Matt Chat's brilliant Youtube channel and his Guido Henkel interview. 16.11.2013.). Still, Arkania's character system is one of the most in-depth seen in cRPG history this far, and Deathfire's stat-wise reminds it a bit (with perhaps few "filler" skills left off).

(The forces of dead)

As a little new innovative feature, the game will support Dice+ for those who want to experience the game with some additional pen-and-paper style flavor (and own the product), and use an actual physical, electronic, wireless dice for some rolls in the game, instead of letting the game naturally to roll and calculate everything for you. This will not affect to gameplay experience of those, who don't want to / can't use Dice+, as this feature will be completely optional, and won't be required to play the game. The used version will be an actual D20 die (as Deathfire is entirely D20-based game in it's rolls), which you can roll on a table when certain events take place in the game, and the game will then recognize your rolls (naturally, you can let computer handle all of this as well). Ideas to use the dice for, so far, include safety rolls and traps (perhaps more in the future).

Finally, lets take a look at the basic information about the game, as that will always form the "big picture" in our minds about the product. This far we know that there are six Races, of which any race can choose a from eight Classes and 34 Traits (/skills). In addition there are "Talents", but we don't know anything more of those at this point. I'm glad to see that Locks (lock-picking) and Stealth are included, as they always create an additional element of thrill to dungeon-exploration. Disease and Poison Treatment are also note worthy, since negative effects to your character's health seem to be planned to be included in Deathfire, and they bring an element of survival, when you're not walking on safe grounds. Negative traits should have another enhancing impact on the gameplay. There are several more intriguing traits such as Taunting, different Lores, Languages, History, Luck, and Curiosity - of which I'm very interested to see in the final product, to find out what are their working mechanics in the game (as some of these aren't exactly self-explanatory in terms of functionality, so at this point I can just speculate). See all races, classes and traits below:

I'm proud to say that thegamersdungeon have backed Deathfire with an amount we could afford right now ($25)... :-) It will be very interesting to see what Guido Henkel, Marian Arnold, and G3Studios makes out of this project, if it gets successfully funded, as it's character system and interactivity seems to have interesting components included indeed!

Friday, 8 November 2013

When highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto V was released for Xbox360 and Playstation 3, having insanely high development budget close to $270 million, it was a huge sales success. Behind commercial success, it was mainly fun-to-play single player campaign with entertaining story and great voice acting, flowing violent language and memorable scenes with interesting characters, including good, solid, game play mechanics. With GTA V, it felt like Rockstar managed to combine a pure game containing deep enough game play mechanics, with movie-like presentation. Little bit of racing, little bit of third person shooter, and much of a story.

Calling GTA V a pure open world game (in sense of role-playing games, which are usually first to use this setting extensively) would be bit over-exaggerating, as the game does not offer that much in terms of rewarding exploration, in addition to straight-forward-but-fun main stories of the three separate lead characters (Michael, Franklin, Trevor). Sure, the city is free to explore and looks great, but with bit too small amount of actual things to do and discover (besides the mini-games, which feel separate from the actual game content, main campaign, and the core gameplay). Rockstar, in my opinion, should had focused to make the actual core world - Los Santos and it's streets - bit more interactive and in-depth with random events, side quests etc., connected to perhaps gang stuff and criminal activity - things that would be truly connected to the core of the game play, instead of focusing their energy on mini-games such as Tennis, Parachute jumping and so on. The bigger the emphasize on mini-games is, the more shattered overall experience is. That being said, the single-player campaign is very entertaining, and quite lengthy, thus making GTA V one of the best console games this year, though, the open game world of Los Santos leaves some unfilled potential hanging around.

GTA Online: an extension of GTA V or MMO?
While single player mode (GTA V) took full advantage of story line with pre-defined, voice-acted characters, and main quest - I was hoping Rockstar to take full advantage of Los Santos and it's enormous open world by free roam mode with GTA Online. Rockstar created a big hype around the online mode before it's release, which would take the game beyond single player campaign limits: create your own unique character, do heists and explore open world with friends!

In my opinion, Rockstar marketed GTA V's multiplayer-mode as it's own game (based on GTA V), MMO branded product, instead of just being multiplayer extension of GTA V. This statement is backed with a fact, that Rockstar actually named the multiplayer mode as "GTA Online", instead just leaving it unnamed, being option inside GTA V. Another fact would be, that the company also provided possibility for players to buy multiplayer cash with real money in-game, which is not usually done, unless the game (or it's mode) is considered to be largely unique and separate experience from the actual single-player game. Thus, GTA Online should be reviewed as such, separate MMO game, not just a multiplayer option in GTA V.

GTA Online: what's there to do?
Now, those "problems", or rather unfulfilled potential of single player (GTA V) free-roam mode - the open world, so to say, are highlighted in GTA Online. GTA V single player mode shines because of the great, acted story, memorable characters, memorable single-player-tailored pre-defined events and quests. GTA Online, however, drops off the great character driven story, leaving Los Santos rather empty and dull, stripped down event, because multiplayer mode fails add anything unique to replace the trademark of single player mode. GTA Online has good game engine, mechanics, and finely crafted detailed city of Los Santos, but without real interactivity and competition between your online character, game world, and rest of the players. Why so? Read on and find out!

GTA Online, drops player in the game world by creating your character with slightly frustrating "face editor", along with selecting your emphasis on your starting skills (which feel quite useless and fail to make your character feel unique in an RPG way), and then moving on to a cut scene of your arrival to online world of Los Santos. Franklin (seen in single player campaign) welcomes you at the airport, and introduces you to the city, along with cast credits rolling. The beginning sort of gives you impression about story driven experience, just like in single player mode, but after this, cut-scenes are scarce and there is no story in Online mode really. And you cannot really create your own story with your unique online character either, since the game doesn't allow your character to have unique status, reputation, or definition of a style. It's obvious from the beginning that GTA Online does not provide any sort of a RPG experience (not even loaning slight elements from the genre). You got your characters looks, and then you level up. There's a few skills like driving, flying, shooting, strenght... but they don't seem to do that much and are quite broad kind of skills, anyway. That's pretty much as deep as the whole system considering who you are - and what you represent - goes (along with crews, but they are purely unfinished at this stage, we'll talk a bit about them later).

(You can also buy apartment. The most expensive ones feature great view. The apartment itself is rather meaningless, but...)

(...the garage included with it isn't, since it's the only way to own more than one car insured bound to you! PS. Notice that custom crew logos look ok for yourself in-game (but not if other players view yours))

So what can you do in GTA Online? Pretty much everything that's included in GTA V, except the story. But it all feels stripped down. I feel it awkward that Rockstar hasn't build up real competitive system for multiplayer with good rewards, rankings, interactivity, and crew relations. Anyway, most of your time you'll be either shopping items (guns, masks, tattoos, wear, cars, car parts - many of which are unlocked by leveling your character up), or getting reputation points (for leveling up) by participating co-op jobs (real heists aren't included, at least for now), races, deathmatches, committing crimes, or trying to kill other players in free-roam mode. You can jump between jobs and your free-roam instance rather seamlessly by using your mobile phone, which is a nice feature, but at the same time perhaps breaks the immersion of connection between free roam mode and other mini-games. Sadly, there are no many kind of crimes to commit in free roam (and the few are very repetitive shortly after), co-op jobs with other players are fun at first but aren't quite varying (and in my opinion do not reward well enough), and there's no real competitive ranking system to keep player versus player combat interesting. Races are decently good, although GTA V's driving mechanics aren't really shining in competitive racing part (this is far from Forza Motorsport, and not quite good as more arcade'y Need For Speed series), and playing dirty is way too easy and not penalized. Some weird errors on driving mechanics for example send your car on ten meter high air-flight time to time from a small bump on a road that shouldn't generally do that, or just spin you around randomly, which is annoying, though (as you sometimes lose the lead just because of bad luck). Not to mention, that when NPC traffic is turned on for races, AI drivers are the biggest jerks I've ever seen in a console game: they may turn in front of you at straight road just when you're about to pass them, when there's no intersection around at all! This happens very often and it's annoying, because it makes no absolute sense! I don't think I've ever cursed as frequently in any game, starting from NES era, than in GTA Online's land race with traffic on. In addition, NPC traffic tends to cause lag-spikes in races. Some tracks are rather confusing, as tracks do not always clearly show which road to take on intersection, thus making you lose several races just because you took the wrong turn (memorizing the tracks is the key, but it's still not fun). Deathmatches are chaotic, and again, solid, but auto-aim should definitely be turned off, as now players can just tap LT (Xbox360) to automatically aim and zoom on the closest target, even if they haven't actually spotted the target yet. It's way too much assist in my opinion, and spoils much of the fun, too. The most rewarding part is getting your character leveled up to unlock new guns and car modifications, thus making your character more powerful - but even with that, the free roam mode lacks the final, the point, and focus. There's no real goal (except for leveling up, which is much faster doing jobs and playing mini-games). Also, lobbies for jobs and races do not function properly. For example, people have problems to host and join events meant for friends- or crews-only. Quick-join option (for jobs) does not give specific enough choices for player to select and define what kind of a job he/she they are looking for. You want to join a land race with muscle cars? Welcome to the lottery-night! You only have an option to "join a race", which could mean anything from supercar land-race to motorbikes and helicopter race. This shows pure sloppiness from Rockstar side.

Free-to-explore online mode runs with maximum 16 players per server. In this mode you should have a chance to affect the game world in some way, and create some friendly competition and interaction between the players, but this doesn't really ever happen. The game mechanics are just rather primitive in part of the online functionality and interaction. In online mode's free roam, the streets seem to never change and AI events are the few, scarce, and repetitive, thus exploration doesn't keep interesting for long. I can see people enjoying GTA Online at it's current state for few weeks, then losing the interest for few weeks more, and quitting after a full month. Random events happening quite frequently, causing some interaction between players and game world, would keep the things interesting. Unfortunately there are just a few of those - so few, that it almost feels like online mode was released incomplete. Those events should have major priority, since they have a major impact on the fun-factor! The random events do not provide varying challenge and reward each time - in fact, they are very repetitive (would it be so hard to add for example some foreign AI gangs, or highly dangerous AI criminals, who could attack to specific crews, players, the whole city, or even police, time to time, catching player in middle of it all - with some reward up for grabs of course). Slight repetitiveness would not really even matter with random events THAT much, if there were at least something like twenty of different small random events in free roam available (and perhaps a few major, more complex ones). Rockstar room for a lot of improvement here...

The few events that appear randomly in free roam mode include: an armored truck, a gang war (separate event for player versus AI gangsters), Simeon wants a high priority import export vehicle (steal a car) or lists specific cars that are currently "hot", which you should steal and deliver to him. You can tell, that that's not many! An armored truck may randomly appear. By robbing it, you decent amount of cash (around $5 000 to $15 000, in comparison to an apartment, of which low level ones cost around bit less than $100 000). Worst of it all, however, is that it's the same event every time without variation (the same applies to other free roam events, too). Chase the truck down, park in front of it so it stops, get behind, shoot the back doors with shotgun, take the money and bail. In a gang war, a marked red area may appear in your minimap, and by entering it you start "a gang war", which means short combat against several gang-members (this can't be done on co-op, and you can't be physically harmed by other players while on it). A reward is small amount of money and random weaponry. They, too, are repetitive, but rather solid on their own right. Hijacking cars and delivering them to Los Santos Customs for cash is something you can do for the money. However, since the best and most rare cars are "too hot to modify", thus unable to enter LS Customs at all, you can't sell them either, so hunting them becomes rather pointless. This way, mid-tier cars do give the best possible amount of money for you when you deliver them to LS Customs. However, you can only deliver one car per something like half hour (?). I understand that if you find a rare car, Rockstar doesn't want to allow you to own it infinitely straight away (with insurance added, so it's bound to you ever after), but not even being able to enter LS Customs to sell the car is a bit of a letdown, as hunting rare cars for money is not possible. I don't quite understand why Rockstar didn't just make it so, that high-end supercars could be sold at LS Customs, but not insured. The most expensive cars you can sell grant you around $8000-$9000, of which one is Ubermacht Oracle. As for a random event considering cars, Simeon might ask you to retrieve specific high priority vehicle, randomly appearing around the map. Get it, re-spray it, return it, and get some money (amount doesn't vary much, around $6500-$12 000). Sometimes, when player hijacks an NPC vehicle, the NPC sets a bounty on the player, after which you can claim it by killing him/her. Amount of reward varies around $1000 to $9000. That's pretty much sadly all the game-generated events in free roam shortly explained, that there is.

Think about playing the GTA Online for months - could you honestly say that the free-roam events mentioned above would be enough to keep the game entertaining? Free roam, in my opinion, should be the main focus of GTA Online, providing highly interactive and rewarding exploration with changing game-world (by random things, and by players currently playing in the session) - which by now feels very static.

(One of the most expensive cars that aren't "too hot to modify" and can be sold in LS Customs: Ubermach Oracle)

Where's the catch, where's the focus, where are the rewards?

So, if the game does not provide randomly generated events in free-roam mode for you, then how about creating some events by yourself, by starting your own reign of terror? Sure, you can do that, but it's not as rewarding experience as one would hope for. You can go rob a store (repetitive event, small reward) and get cops on your tail. Evading cops gives you reputation points for leveling up (a little), but nothing else. Getting caught, however, will annoyingly get your car impounded by cops every time (which sometimes gets bugged so that the car can't be found on the police parking lot), and you will have to steal it back. Again, reward for doing this is just getting the car back, and it's fun the first few times, but in the end it's the same mission over and over again, and gets boring quite fast. It's also annoying, that police interrupts your war against other player, when if you get killed by the enemy player, police impounds your car. Causing mayhem against the police force and having a longest run ever before getting caught is just for the kicks of it, too. The game does not reward this in any decent way (although it's rather hilarious at times, when several players similarly chased by police wander into the same area, thus creating chaos). Your reputation points do not increase much whether you run from the law for ten minutes or half hour, and there's no fame among GTA Online community for your efforts against the law, either.

As for one thing, you can kill other players and rob part of their money on every kill, but the amount is ridiculously low, often varying from $30 (the most often) to $200 (very rarely). It's next to nothing in GTA Online's economy. Killing other players do not affect your status in game world, either (unless you blow up their personal vehicles, which dumps your character into "Bad Sport Lobby" for days with others who have behaved badly - forced to wear a stupid looking hat). The only way your "unique" online character is defined and judged by other players is your character's level - the game world does not make anything out of your character in any way (other than your level affecting to unlocked weapons, clothing, and car parts). Considering PvP ranking and stats, all that you see, when you get killed by someone (or you kill him), is how many times your rival has killed you in this specific run, and how many times you have killed him. There is no real rewarding ranking system behind PvP, which would show the best player-killers globally (or per session), along with interesting rewards (not just money, but fame, too!). If you happen to die during combat, you will lose around $500 (not sure if this was tuned down a bit lately) for hospital bills and quite large amount of ammo (which is not that cheap either). So, generally, you can make other player suffer decent amount of money (or yourself, if you bite the bullet first), but you do not gain fair amount of money or gain player status out of it (unless, of course the player has a small bounty on him, but I find that it's not enough to keep things interesting). Now, perhaps random killing of other players would not be fun for everyone, but it can already be avoided by activating passive mode for price of $100, which gives you 15 minutes of protection from attacks of other players, so that's not the problem to begin with.

If random killing is not something that Rockstar wants to reward players for, then, at least, they should create goals (/means) around player versus player combat, and build much deeper "Crew"-system (in other words Guilds), adding competitive components, such as ranking, and reward system, behind crews to keep the things interesting! Crews are human player formed gangs that any player can create. Players can then invite their friends or unknown players to join them. Crews are the thing that should let players represent something in GTA Online, and add competitive edge through ranking system of some sort, but at the moment crews feel only very superficial with no real purpose what so ever. Rockstar Social Club website keeps track of existing crews and lists them, with some very basic information and stats of each players, but it feels generally incomplete and non-rewarding component (at the moment), and being very separate and distant from the actual game play. You can wear a tag, but there are no crew events or relations, no wars, no interaction whatsoever in GTA Online game world, and thus, Rockstar have only scratched the surface of what could be deep and meaningful crew-system. Creating a crew allows you to, at least, represent yourself by adding crew colors and, the best of it all, use crew logo on t-shirts and cars. This, too, however, is a mess currently. Using a crew logo on t-shirt, for example, will shows as ridiculously low quality pixelated mess for other players. They can't really make anything out of the logo when they see it (same goes for tattoos). You can also put crew logo on cars, but you can't choose logo location or size, which is rather unimpressive. Logo appears on pre-defined sizes on the hood of the car depending of the car model, ranging from postage stamp to "fair" size. I doubt small thing like this would be even hard to fix. Ridiculously limited and faulty crew options do reflect well the current flawed status of GTA Online.
What I'd wish for, would be more in-depth interaction, stats, and competition with in-game rewards (not just at the separate and incomplete Social Club website) - be it player versus player, or crew versus crew situation. Now you can see some very simple PvP stats in-game, and compare stats of your crew members (but not globally) at Social Club website. There's no rewards in either situation, and the whole system feels too shattered, lacking focus.

Other complaints

Other complaints would include forced "auto aim" on the online servers (in all game modes from free exploration to deathmatch and jobs), which in my opinion takes some fun away from, at least, player versus player combat, as camping behind corner and peeking out with auto aim becomes way too powerful tactic - thus making combat often emphasized in corner-camping, or random auto-aim-locking without having to use ones own eyes to spot an enemy. Another problem is when you're trying to kill your rival player in front of you, in middle of cop chase, and auto aim picks one of the dozen cops (or civilian NPC) as a target - oh the frustration! The maximum range, where the gun will lock and use auto-aim isn't also that clear situation, as auto-aim will not work at the certain longer range. Auto-aim will not work with sniper rifle at all, but will work with any other gun. Thus, this makes it frustrating to use sniper rifle in PvP (player versus player) situations, because you never know, whether the opponent is at auto-aim range exactly, or not. If he is, by any luck (for him), he will nail you for sure, since aiming manually with sniper rifle is slow and much more inaccurate (naturally), compared to far quicker auto-aim with machine gun. When both players are just about at the maximum range of auto-aim functionality of each others, it's about pure luck who succeeds to locks the aim to the other player, at the point, when being within the auto-aim range. If another player locks into the other second earlier while still out of auto-aim range, and another locks to the other a second later, being just about in the range, the latter one wins nine times out of ten. That's not challenging gameplay, that is just plain awkward and stupid, relying on randomness rather than on skill. So, why not just disable auto aim fully? Free aim with Xbox360 controller's stick, in 3rd person shooter, isn't perhaps the most accurate combination. Free aim on player versus player is rather clumsy and inaccurate, giving nowhere near the same satisfaction to control, than aiming and shooting Call of Duty and Battlefield series. Maybe we can just draw a conclusion, that GTA Online's shooting/aiming mechanics (at player versus player combat) at their current stage are just not so fun and fluid to play, than on the most successful online shooters of today (the difference is rather large). The combination of free aim and auto-aim works rather well with co-operative missions, having players to form up against computer opponents. However, since PvP has rather large role on online game such as GTA Online, I see the problems in it's functionality as a major flaw. Perhaps combination of forcing auto-aim off, and decreasing health of the players, so that less hits would be required for a kill, would improve things, though.

Rockstar also tried to make GTA Online feel interactive in rather cheap way, by having some of the NPC characters, featured in single player campaign, to call you time to time randomly. Cheap thing about it is, that few of the characters keep calling in middle of the cop chase, repeating the same few meaningless only sentences that they have. I really don't feel like being interrupted by a call about most awesome parachute jump (which is just like any other, really, nothing unique), while getting shot to the butt by ten cops while trying to run (evidently ringing phone enables walk-mode automatically). Only 16 players in free roam mode is slight disappointment, as that is maximum, and isn't always reached. Hopefully Rockstar can crank out that amount from 16 to 32 players, or even 24, since Los Santos area is rather big. Also, I have to add, that whenever it's possible to buy in-game things (in this case credits) with real money, there's risk of creating unnecessary imbalances and disabling the joy of getting niceties with hard work (actual playing). Thus, I think Rockstar shouldn't had included real-money bargains for in-game cash (especially at this stage, when the game is truly not complete). Maybe one day when this can truly feel like a worthy MMO, I can accept real money bargains (though, even then they shouldn't be over-powered).

Rockstar servers and GTA Online had some stability and character progression lost issues on it's initial release (Rockstar released Stimulus Package granting $500 000 for everyone, who had played the game in October to make up for the problems), but the game's online mode is running rather stable now most of the time. There are still some freeze and lag issues, which are especially showing on 16 player races (even more, when NPC traffic is turned on). Once in a while you may get thrown out from the game (free roam) because cloud server is down or unable to be connected with. Fun fact is that game may state that you were "voted out by the other players", even though the problem at it's core is connection issue with cloud server, and there haven't been any voting against you.

(Auto-aim in online-mode makes corner-camping way too powerful tool. And those pointless phonecalls are rather annoying, failing to create the feel of necessary interactivity)

Bottom line
Having read several high tier gaming magazines doing rather positive reviews GTA Online, or not daring to put the cat on the table, I decided to honestly focus on more negative side of if all, as I feel the experience is quite flawed, incomplete, and negative aspects are the ones raising on pedestal after first few weeks spent with GTA Online. GTA Online is still decently fun online game at the times, and fun to mess around with in the beginning, being best with your friends! However, highly limited possibilities for your character to represent anything in GTA Online game world: your achievements, PvP success, or your crew, comes with frustration that shatters motivation to keep on going and playing GTA Online for long. In addition, particularly aiming system is problematic, seeming to suit on co-operative jobs rather well, but being just faulty at it's design and functionality on player versus player situations. Rockstar have failed to make GTA Online interactive and competitive game model - there's no real catch in it's open world. Character leveling system and it's rewards (unlocks) aren't enough to keep things entertaining (although a necessary piece of good recipe). Jobs and the scarce free roam mode events at the moment are way too few and repetitive in their nature. The actual ranking and reward system, more in-depth crew system (and relations), and more than just seemingly living game world with (much) more random events taking place in free-roam (specifically designed for online experience) would be a MUST to keep things interesting for longer than a month, in addition with improvements on PvP combat. Rockstar Social Club keeps track of crews, but contains just few basic stats, and once again, is incomplete, and feels totally separate of the actual game play.

Problems of GTA V and it's game world come apparent in it's online counterpart, as you take away the component that made GTA V a great game (story driven, memorable main quest and it's unique events) - and thus this component should be replaced with something else (for example suggestions mentioned above), or GTA Online's community will die before it really even started to grow. GTA Online, in my opinion, was seemingly marketed as an MMO version of GTA V, but it's way too incomplete and unfinished, with several major issues, to stand up as complete MMO. There's enormous unused potential, though. It may sound like I hated GTA Online, but let me assure you, I don't. I'm just disappointed about the release of unfinished product and (so far) missed, huge opportunity. I enjoy the online mode to some extent. Yet, Rockstar have a lot of work to do, if they want to flesh this online experience out to something more memorable. The future will show whether Rockstar manages to improve GTA Online to stand up as worthy GTA universe MMO game, but judging by the efforts so far, I wouldn't count on so huge improvement. GTA Online is something to return for time to time - but not the grand online world of GTA universe we were looking for (at least not for me).

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

Grand Theft Auto V was reported to be the most expensive video game ever created so far by scotsman.com. Whether believing in numbers presented by scotsman (£175 000 = ~$278 000 for development and marketing together), or the other sources from internet, development and marketing budget estimate combined is around $265 million - $278 million. The game is now out for PS3 and Xbox 360. There's possibility that the game could be ported to the next gen consoles PS4 and Xbox One later one, also.

As we can see, GTA V:s budget is enormous, topping it's predecessor's and Elder Scrolls Skyrim's budget by far, being over two times more expensive game project. That's what it takes nowadays with top quality graphics and game engine, combined with voice acting and vast open game world. Is it all that necessary? Well, at least gamers seem to appreciate efforts of the creator, Rockstar Games, since the series has already sold approximately 135 million copies this far. GTA V is expected to sell 25 million copies within the first year since it's release, achieving sales of £1bn (New GTA V release tipped to rake in £1bn in sales. scotsman.com.).

Game industry has reached the point, where high budget games with high-end graphics require budgets equivalent to big modern Hollywood movies, with real actors. For example, Pirates of Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which had quite much CGI (computer generated graphics), did cost around $225 million to make. Less, than GTA V. Reasonable? The Terminator (1984) required around $6,4 million, while it's highly praised sequel T2: The Judgement Day, with expensive special effects at the time, required $102 million to be created, somewhat equal to Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's budget.

You can pretty much recognize the scale of expense in modern AAA (top class, top graphics) games such as GTA V right here. They're big business now, compared to the games in nineties, which required only fraction of the development budget of nowadays big games. Fallout 1 (1997) required $3 million for development, while Wing Commander IV (1996) was made with $12 (big budget on it's day, with real actors acting in the movie cut-scenes).

In GTA V, you have not one, but three main characters, each having their own personalities. You can switch between the control of characters pretty much as you like, on the fly. This will bring fresh tactical approach to some missions such as heists, where each character is doing his own job. Maybe you want to switch from the close range assaulting character to the sniper in the background. Several critics have been complaining that all the lead characters are men. There's no strong woman characters, and the ones included in game are seen rather as "objects" for men. Needless to say, since the Rockstar Games (the developer) have taken such direction, it's obvious that the game is made to appeal more towards male audience, than female. Rockstar have taken their direction, and I fail to see who are the critics to complain about sexism and lack of strong female lead character in a video game? Do we have to bring real-life "equality" and real life aspects into a fictional video game, really? Are developers in gaming business not free to choose their own fictional presentation of their game world in their game anymore?

Critics are demanding developers of big games to turn their game worlds into family friendly real-life simulators, with equality of sexes. Jesus, if developers wants to make a game with open world, with lead characters being only men, without strong women - if they want to create it for male audience, who are critics to whine about it, demanding, that the game should had been made with female audience in mind too? I believe in freedom of artistic presentation.

Here are some of the complaints recently made by critics considering GTA V:

"[...] For all that the game does right, it has a genuinely problematic aspect that is not its enthusiasm for violence or sex but its lack of interest in women as something other than lustful airheads (notwithstanding a late-game cameo by Mr. Houser’s mother, Geraldine Moffat, a British actress of the 1960s and ’70s). One of the only young women in the game not oversexed and under-read is sucked into a jet turbine" (Grand Theft Auto V Is a Return to the Comedy of Violence. Chris Suellentrop. New York Times.).

"[...] Rockstar will be bashed about the fact, that game doesn't have a female lead character, and rightfully so" (Jonas Thente. Dagens Nyheter (Swedish magazine, translated).
Some other subjects of criticism focus on immigrant discrimination and interrogation tactics, which are quite similar to those which US military used when interrogating terrorists. Needless to say, critics are just throwing fuel to the fire, and it's going to be all just extra publicity for GTA V and Rockstar Games, helping game sales to shoot through the roof.

Too violent for everyone? Make it R-rated or NC-17. Can't rely to the lead character (because no female, or whatever the reason may be)? Then don't buy the game, get another one with a lead character you like to play as and can rely to. It's up to us customers to choose what we want to play and which games we'll pass because they don't appeal to us. In my opinion we can't demand game developers to make their own work of art appealing for everyone.

What do you think, is the criticism justified, or should the creators be able to choose their target audience freely and create the game world as they like?

Friday, 30 August 2013

The lads in InXile Entertainment have put out new long-awaited gameplay video of Wasteland 2, consisting middle-way lengthy 18minutes of gameplay, presented by Chris Keenan of InXile Entertainment!

"team has been hard at work for last couple of months, going through the entire build, getting for feature complete, and we've also put together this demo for you, and I'm pretty excited about it" (Chris Keenan. InXile Entertainment.)
The video is set to, and showing off, fourth or fifth level of Wasteland 2. The area is called 'Prison', being originally Desert Ranger's headquarters, now taken over by Red Scorpion Militia.

Keenan shows and discusses about the game's long and short-term reactivity towards your actions and discussions with NPCs (while showing off a conversation with man called "Fred", first NPC you will encounter in Prison area). While short-term reactivity will take it's action directly or within the few minutes after a conversation or encounter, some of your actions will have long-time affection, even through the whole game play, and affect differently towards different NPCs. Both, long-term and short-term reactions are much needed and welcomed, expanding the game-play experience of Wasteland 2. It still remains to be seen by what level of quality InXile can perform when making these choices and creating these stories with the reactivity. If the reactions make sense, are interesting, and there are plenty to play with, it will greatly expand re-play-value of the game.

Keenan also demonstrates a scenario about helping Fred with his cart, which is stuck in the mud. First ranger (one of our four characters) doesn't succeed with the deed, while the second with more 'brute force' does it with ease. The system to find out whether your character is capable of interacting with an object or not (the cart), has been slightly streamlined, whereas player can see a text hovering over an object in gameplay-screen telling broadly, how easy or hard it is to interact with a certain character with a certain object. Keenan explains that they did not want player having to check out character-stat-screen every time with each character, to find out what their skills for the specific taste (brute force etc.) are. This is called "a relative difficulty system" and will display tag either for easy, medium, or hard interaction with an object, for the selecter character.
A "short time reactivity" with helping Fred has now made him friendly enough with the player, which opens up 'trade' option with Fred in the conversation system. A "long term reactivity with Fred is that after helping him out, he will show up couple of levels later in totally different circumstances with different gear to sell, and with couple of bodyguards, as he's been harassed along the way (The other options, such as not helping, weren't presented). How the story with Fred continues will be revealed eventually in the full version.

On the bartering screen with Fred you will notice, that along the money, you may also use items scavenged for bartering and trading. The radio also plays significant role in Wasteland 2 driving the story and side-quests forward, as you will receive signals and recorded messages with the radio at certain areas, linking new stories to areas and creating new mysteries for you to solve. One of such takes place shortly after the meeting with Fred, whereas rangers receive radio signal with haunting message with woman's voice saying:

Leading the rangers to adventure deeper within the canyons in the area, discovering badly a sick woman, who tells that The Scorpions have killed the doctor of the village/area, and medicine is too expensive. The woman then asks Rangers to kill her, for she is in pain. Keenan demonstrates a few possible ways to solve the situation: firstly, if you have a ranger with high enough healing skills (surgeon), you might try to heal the woman, secondly you could head out to the wasteland and find out Elroy (mentioned in the radio signal), or thirdly you could try to find the medicine out yourself, or finally you could respond to her plea and put her out of her misery. The way to solve presented here is to kill the woman, after which Elroy arrives to the scene yelling that he has the medicine, leading into a fight with him, as you obviously nailed the poor woman with some lead (in this particular scenario). Again, possibility to solve problems differently with a different outcomes does enchance re-play value greatly. Sadly, at this point the other possible outcomes weren't presented more in-depth way, which would had been interesting. But, knowing that many actions of yours will affect also in a long-term way towards the world around is one of the promising things to create illusion of fully reacting game world.

Getting back to "long-term reactivity", another interesting thing with major affection on your current play-through is, certain areas and stories might get completely locked out for you in that specific whole play-through, while the others may open up. This depends of your actions, and once again, sounds brilliant! Keenan tells, that for example, during the first 30minutes of the gameplay, you will have to make a choice, which will cut out "an entire level". This, according to Keenan, is about 1h30mins to 2hours of gameplay, based on single decision. Personally, I never liked much of the cRPGs, where you could achieve and complete everything with a single play-through, as playing your "role" and considering your "actions" falls totally flat, if no taken action really matters. A game world that changes and opens up different stories on a different play-through makes the world feel reactive and alive, even if you missed a certain quest or area, but unlocked another, or were punished by something your did. You're heading towards great direction Mr. Fargo (& co.)!

Which warms my heart is that there will be around 20 NPC companions (according to Keenan) that join to your party, scattered throughout the entire game world, thus making exploration and playing with different conversation-options more fun. Some of the companions will join right away, but the others you may have to convince first in a way or another, while some may not even want to join your party (perhaps, depending of your actions). Keenan puts emphasise on the fact, that your actions will reflect with the gameworld, and will be judged by other NPCs, so choose wisely.

Conversation-system with NPCs based on keywords has been overhauled from the initial plans a bit. In the first gameplay demo some months ago, you were only able to see single keywords (your party's own dialogue) like (Demand, Guns, Quest) etc. in a conversation with an NPC - while only NPCs responses were shown as full sentences. There were not full sentences you could select and view as for your party's respond towards an NPC. Now, however, while the keywords still present your options in dialogue/conversation-screen, hovering over a keyword with mouse will now show you a whole sentence behind the keyword such as: Gun -> Why do you care about the guns? New keywords will also become available and pop up during conversation, depending of your path of conversation you take with an NPC. Some choices may unlock the others and branch into a new direction!

After the incident with Elroy and the dying woman, The Rangers bump into a group of Red Scorpion Militia, torturing a woman and harassing your rangers, and...

Find out the rest by watching the gameplay video below!

Criticism: the criticism towards the gameplay video of Wasteland 2 by me is rather, minor. As for one thing, I could go on forever how animated 2D sprites and drawn 2D-graphics look artistically far better than 3D. But once again, even if 3D artistically isn't perhaps the best, most vivid choice, it doesn't matter as far as there's enough depth of game-play behind the whole core system of the game, with great narrative style of story, and much reactivity. One minor thing I noticed personally was, that the four characters (at least in the gameplay demo) didn't have their own unique "feel" of personality. The small character portraits didn't just "do it for me". There's much that can be achieved in party-based games by small things, making characters more alive and feel individual. Just take a look into Jagged Alliance 2 with the spoken, funny dialogue with good one-liners, or Baldur's Gate with with top-notch interaction between the characters and different reactions to unique situations by each. Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see how unique the individual characters within the party turn out to be in the final Wasteland 2 version.

Saturday, 17 August 2013

INTRODUCTION

It's been over a decade since the release of last Might And Magic computer role-playing game (IX), which was quite a disaster after long running successful game series developed by New World Computing. While the last one of the series was simply put, bad, the franchise is still best remembered by those eight great party-based computer role-playing games ranging from the mid-eighties to late nineties up until Might And Magic VIII: Day Of The Destroyer. Nowadays, New World Computing is long gone company which fell into bankruptcy, and rights to Might And Magic titles are now owned by Ubisoft, who have been releasing Heroes Of Might & Magic (strategy) franchise games in the new millennium with constant frequency. Lets forget about HOMM for a moment. How about old good MM role-playing franchise, the one, of which spin-off HOMM series are?

It all came out of the blue, that finally, there was a true Might And Magic computer role-playing game in the making! Ubisoft (publisher) had granted rights for German "Limbic Entertainment" to develop the new cRPG title after over a decade. Many people from Limbic staff describe their upcoming title, Might And Magic X, to be their dream project as several of them were huge fans of the earlier games of the franchise in either eighties or nineties. The pressure to make such an RPG game in the year 2013, that is so heavily tied to old-school roots of the genre, must be quite big. Especially, since Limbic as a game development studio is not very well known of other big games. They have done some expansions for Ubisoft with Might & Magic: Heroes VI recently (a HOMM-title). Nevertheless, ambitions of Limbic Entertainment to make this new Might And Magic title, called Might And Magic X Legacy, to be rooted and influenced by the franchises previous titles, is at least respectable:

"The fact that I am part of the development team of the successor of one of my favorite games back when I was still a kid and couldn’t even comprehend how games are made. So you can say that MMX is fulfilling the childhood dream I never had. I personally really like the fact that we decided to go for the grid based movement and turn based combat as it brings the game closer to Xeen and provided interesting design challenges." (Marcus (LE-Marcus) of Limbic Entertainment, game designer)."A great opportunity to get party based RPG's back on the table. :) Mixing retro game features with modern technologies is a big challenge. I am really amazed what we already achieved at this stage of development and I am sure you fans will also be amazed of this new step in the M&M series." (Thomas Steuber of Limbic Entertainment, technical lead)."As Might & Magic was my first big game when I was “younger" (very first was “Wizard Royal” on Atari ST), I just love that I am now participating in the development of a tribute! After all those years!! :) I like the most that the team tries to retain the vision of the previous games. In general I love that the Might & Magic RPGs have been party-based and that MMX is going to be, too."(Anna (LE-Larissa) of Limbic Entertainment).

Limbic honestly seems to be aiming to make MM:X Legacy faithful to the previous games of the franchise. Faithful - either that or better way to put it: to be one chapter in the franchise. Elements in MM:X Legacy seem to continue Might And Magic tradition, while chances to the core system seem only quite minimal. Limbic Entertainment has been communicating very openly about the development of the game with their fanbase, asking opinions with polls and holding contests, where best ideas may end up to the final product. You can follow MM:X Legacy open development blog at here:
https://mightandmagicx-legacy.ubi.com/opendev/

(wandering in forest of MM:X Legacy)

Might And Magic franchise was always about exploration and discovery, with deep enough, but not the most deepest character generation and system around. There were quite a bit skills and skill-upgrades for characters, but ruleset itself was not the tightest and most limiting one around. That style did fit the franchise perfectly, however. The previous MM games featured a hugely diverse and large game world, set in high fantasy setting, which leaned towards more chaotic and fun, than "realistic" fantasy world setting (if that made any sense?) with tight rules. Might And Magic games were never easy, though. They were long to complete and ranged from medium difficulty to very hard moments and areas. I'm hoping that Might And Magic X Legacy accomplishes the same qualities.

Might And Magic X: Legacy is due to be released in early 2014 according to Gamestar Magazine (the exact date still is unknown at this point), while "Early access" to the game is granted as soon as next monday, 19th of August 2013, including the "1st Act" of the game to be playable with four classes out of the final twelve, and automatic update to digital deluxe edition once released see more details at the end of the post (http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/might-magic-10-legacy/news/might_magic_10_legacy,49310,3026706.html). See more details about early release in the end of the post!

(MM:X Legacy official trailer)

GENERAL SETTING

Limbic Entertainment has been leaking quite a bit information about their upcoming Might And Magic X Legacy, and I've tried my best to combine most important parts of that information in least chaotic form of written document here. Hopefully I'll succeed, at least partly.

Might And Magic X: Legacy will take place in world or Ashan, featured in Ubisoft's latest Heroes Of Might & Magic franchise games. Thus, those hoping to see return of Erathia or Xeen, aren't going to get the exactly same world setting delivered from the past they may have hoped for. But on the other areas the game relies so heavily on the past, that old veterans of the series might just accept it as a new chapter for the franchise. This remains yet to be seen. More accurately the game will not feature a whole world or Ashan, but a region in it, called Agyn Peninsula. In MM:X Legacy you will play as a group of raiders sucked into the game's main plot, which is yet uncovered. Along the main quest of the game which progresses the story forward, you will also be able to take several side quests along your journey for some extra gold, rare items, or character class/skill upgrading features. The game will be totally non-linear after an initial starter-area, where tutorial teaches you how to play the game!

MM:X Legacy will be first-person3D computer role-playing game. It uses tile-based movement, which is known from the previous games Might And Magic I-V, rather than free movement seen in Might And Magic VI-IX. Continuing the same tradition than elder titles of the series, it also uses turn-based combat, where you and your enemy (or more enemies within the same tile) take turns on attacking (and blocking). You can attack with regular melee weapon attack, cast spells, or use ranged attack. In Legacy you will create a party of four heroes. That part is comparable to Might And Magic VI-IX, where the amount was also four, unlike in I-V, where you could create up to six heroes. Your party can be created either manually, randomly, or you can choose pre-made party, but who would really want to? In addition to your own characters, you can hire maximum two "hirelings" to your party for granting different bonuses. They, of course, do cost some money. Your characters may get knocked unconscious, get paralysed, stunned, poisoned, feebleminded, cursed, weak, fell asleep, or die during combat. Resurrection of the dead is still present as in previous titles.

The interface seems to be leaning bit towards old-school, while still featuring "modern touch". Those wishing for real "paperdolls" in character screen will be disappointed to hear that they use static character images, which won't change depending of armors and weapons you wear. There is, however slots for weapons, helmets, amulets, boots and all that stuff, waiting you to find some fine loot or bargain at local town store. The inventory is grid-based where each item takes certain amount of space. The game does also feature artistic interface reminding of the earlier Might And Magic games, with character portraits that do change face depending of different condition (paralyzed, poisoned etc.) and some neat interface graphics, leaning towards the old-school style. Mouseover pop-up information boxes do help new players to check quickly what each attributes and skills mean. Legacy also features a minimap in main interface, world map, and does have auto-mapping feature, whereas unexplored territory will be presented simply as, black, but once discovered, the game automatically maps it for you. This brings smile to my face, since you have to actually explore every bit of the world to see what relies in the area. It enhances the adventure-experience.

(Interface seems to present the game's complexity in an easily understandable way to the player)

As stated, the game's world does not take place in a full world region, but rather a part of a full world region: Agyn Peninsula in world of Ashan. Some of you may then wonder whether it hurts the game's environmental diversity, or is the game world much smaller in size compared to previous MM titles? It's a good point and will be interesting to see whether Limbic puts out a full scale MM title or something, which old veterans would call "a lite" version in terms of size and gameplay content. Limbic has stated that completing the game would take approximately 25 hours to finish. However, that's most likely only main quest without following unnecessary side quests, which many of us feel are necessary, anyway!

Agyn Peninsula world map will consist several archtypes of outside areas such as plains, barren lands, forests, jungles, and mountains, which will have monsters roaming around. The map will be free to explore, with certain limitations to specific areas, to which you will find a way to enter bit later in the game. You might also miss a few altogether in one play through. When traveling, you will also need to sleep to heal your wounds time to time, which will require food. Like in previous titles, you will have limited amount of food in your packs, which will run out and you'll be forced to replenish at the town at some point. Devs stated that cities might not be completely "safe havens", but didn't want to reveal more as it may reveal too much about the story. In towns you can also meet several NPCs to bargain for weapons, find trainers for your skills, get quests and turn them in, and buy spells. However, visiting towns to pay for a trainer for leveling up is not necessary anymore, since leveling up now happens automatically whenever you gather enough XP (experience points). This grants you attribute and skillpoints to spend freely for each character that leveled up. However, to reach higher tier status in your character skills (from Novice tier to Expert, Master, and Grandmaster) requires you to visit trainers and pay them, of which many are located most likely in cities. You may also find a trainer to unlock "a paragon class", a class specific upgrade (featured for each class), which will grant your character special bonuses when unlocked. However, that upgrade may not be available right in the beginning and may require a special quest to do first. Similar mechanic was featured in MMVI-VIII, where for example in MMVII: Blood And Honor you could upgrade your Sorcerer to Lich later in the game.

And of course a true adventurer would not forgot the dungeons and caverns themselves. Developers have promised at least 23 different dungeons, which hold treasures to loot, quests to complete. Added with over 50 different monster types to kill (though not stated whether each monster has several different sub-types like in MMVI-X). Dungeons have different arch types as well, such as forts, temples, ruins, and caverns etc. Some of the dungeons will be multi-level dungeons. I have a feeling that they will not be as big as in previous MM games, judging by their development blog I've been following, but it remains to be seen. Limbic Entertainment's dungeon-making competition at least limited dungeon levels to two, although, it hasn't been said that the devs themselves wouldn't design bigger ones. Also, hidden locations, artifacts, and buttons to open different gates in dungeons are featured in the game. "Blessings", which may permanently buff your party in some way, may also unlock previously unreachable areas later in game, when acquired.

(Caverns are filled with different types of monsters hungry for blood)

The developers describe Might And Magic X: Legacy's map size:

“I believe that there is not such a huge difference when comparing the size of the MMX world map with the one from Clouds of Xeen.” (Stephan (LE-Stephan), Limbic Entertainment)“True, the grid size (x*y) of the world from MMX is actually a little larger.”
(Thomas (LE-Thomas), Limbic Entertainment)

Thus, map size shouldn't be a big issue, but rather the way it's used, and how filled up with events, monsters, hidden treasures, and quests the map is.

There has been concerns by some fans whether the game will be as difficult as before, or has it been made to be "too easy" (which is trend nowadays compared to nineties and eighties). Limbic Entertainment developers have responded that they will squeeze two difficulty modes in: adventurer and warrior. How difficulty varies between them is still a question. However, game designer Marcus stated that "we're aiming for a challenging gaming experience. MM:X Legacy also won't feature "adaptive difficulty", in other words, level scaling. This means, that in the game several monsters and areas will be higher level than your heroes if you stumble on them too early on. You won't be able to kill and conquest everything before you level your party up enough.

CHARACTER CREATION, ATTRIBUTES AND SKILLS

Character creation and system if heart of every real computer role playing-game and defines largely the game's depth and complexity. In Might And Magic X Legacy your party consists of four heroes. Your options are either using pre-made party, random generating a party, or creating your own custom party with character generation process (which, obviously is what 99% of us wants to do!). Your first choices will be selecting class (which also defines a race!) for each hero, each of which provide their own unique bonuses for your characters (see the listing below). Character class also defines which skills are available for your hero at the beginning. In addition you have two open slots for skills for each hero in the beginning, which you can fill with skills of your liking. Your class choice then define which race(s?) are available for you at this point (each race provides their unique racial bonuses).

You can choose name for each of your four heroes, which is quite obvious. Each of your heroes then has their base attributes (might, magic, perception, destiny, vitality, spirit), in addition with health and mana points, which you can modify for each hero. Might And Magic X also allows you to customise your character with different character portraits and voices, depending of character's race and gender, just like in Might And Magic VI-VIII for example.

Each class has their own dedicated "paragon class", bit like in Might And Magic VI-VIII had, whereas at certain point of a game you can take a special class-specific quest and complete it to unlock that class-specific upgrade for your heroes. Unlocking paragon class in MM:X Legacy would also unlock Grandmaster skills for upgrade (according to devs).

(Race selection screen shows up currently confirmed four races)

So can you combine any race with any class freely?

No, unfortunately.
This decreases different possible character race and class combinations.

Ubisoft first stated that:"If you decide to customize each hero, the first feature you will have to pick is the race, which then defines the different classes available for heroes of that race"
(https://mightandmagicx-legacy.ubi.com/opendev/blog/post/view/51b75568e754b63022000009).

But then in the newer update it was stated that:"When creating your own characters for your party, you can choose the class (which also defines the race), a gender, and change the default character name to a name of your choice"
(https://mightandmagicx-legacy.ubi.com/opendev/blog/post/view/51e80852e754b6d20b000001).

The newer update definitely leans toward the fact that there will be only one matching race for each class. For example: Defender-class is always a dwarf, but thinking other way around, if only four races end up on the final product, and there are twelve classes, then dwarf should be able to be either defender class, or yet two more unknown character classes. Makes sense? However, I'm not sure whether all races have been revealed yet?

At the moment there are four different races confirmed to be in the game with following bonuses:

(1) dwarf (children of arkath = natural resistance against Fire Magic, stout = receive more health per point of Vitality)

If you long for older previous Might And Magic games where you could not only upgrade your skills by increasing numerical value, but also be able to learn Expert, Master, Grandmaster upgrades for each available skills by finding and visiting skill-specific trainers around the game world, then you should be happy that these skill-specific upgrades (which cost some gold) are also included in MM:X Legacy! Especially, when "paragon class" for game's each character classes is added on top of that.

Yet, it's unclear whether there will be unique trainer for each skill for it's each skill-level, or will one trainer
of each skill be able to teach it's all levels: Expert, Master, Grandmaster.

For getting spells, you have to pay a visit to arcane libraries located usually in bigger cities of Agyn Peninsula. A slight disappointment is that it seems to be the only way to acquire spells. So far it's not mentioned that spells could be found among loot in the dungeons or hidden within gameworld, unlike other treasures. Oh well! By the way, you can use scrolls without the having knowledge of magic with any character, but the spell scroll will disappear when used.

Below are all stats, attributes, and skills we know are in the game so far. Sadly, spells are yet unknown! We just know the different schools of magic (see below).

Main stats
-After each level-up you gain extra health and mana points automatically, depending of your character class. Potions can be used to replenish both of the stats.

health

mana

Attributes
-Compared to earlier MM games attributes have been bit revamped. Luck has been removed all together. After each level-up you get five amount of points to distribute for attributes.

might (melee damage, health points)

magic (magic damage, mana points)

perception (range damage, attack value)

destiny (critical hit chance, evade value)

vitality (health points)

spirit (mana points)

Defence

armour value

evade value

block chance

general blocks

melee blocks

Resistance

primordial

fire

water

earth

air

light

dark

Skills
As mentioned before, each class has their own set of starting skills, and you get to choose two more skills in addition for each hero. Skills allow you to learn magic, weapon, and other miscellaneous skills like dual wielding to strike with two weapons. Skills are increased after leveling up when you're granted skillpoints to increase numeric value of each skill. In addition "trainers" do teach you skill-upgrades to another level from Novice once you have accomplished requirements (yet unknown) for the specific skill. The additional levels are: Expert, Master, and Grandmaster. As you can see, some skills such as identify, merchant, thieving skills known from previous games of the franchise are left off. There may be some hirelings, however, which increase some of these skills such as merchant (better buying prices), and "disarm trap" mechanic has been announced to be featured in the game, but success being defined by might, magic, and perception attributes
instead of a single skill.
(Confirmed skills so far):

In addition to skills, there are also two other things that may buff your party or grant some special things that skills won't: hirelings and blessings. Lets take a bit deeper look into them than mentioned earlier:

in addition there will be "blessings", which are permanent, non-combat effects applying to whole party at once. There will be six different blessings (each one for one of the six dragon gods of Ashan) and they come as special rewards for certain actions. Few examples of blessings grant "spot secrets", "climb surfaces" (Ylath's blessing) and "swimming". They may also grant extra resistance to specific schools of magic or unlock map areas. Only first of the blessings is promised to be in the main-story path, while finding
the rest will indeed require some exploration! The idea of blessings being part of unlocking some main, as well as hidden areas sounds tempting and game enhancing experience.
(https://mightandmagicx-legacy.ubi.com/opendev/blog/post/view/51f7d290e754b6a367000007).

(Character creation skills screen for Orc Barbarian)

(A listing showcasing which skills an Orc barbarian can upgrade from Novice tier to Expert, Master, And Grandmaster tiers - you can't get it all at once!)

COMBAT AND EXPERIENCE

In Might And Magic X: Legacy combat you and monsters take turns in attacking/casting spells, and try to block attack while the others are striking. Since the movement system is also tile-based, each tile can only hold limited amount of monsters stacked up together. Monsters are divided into three size classes, whereas one tile can hold two three small-sized monsters, two medium, and one large monster. This way you cannot end up fighting insane masses at once, like in Might And Magic VI Mandate of Heaven, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's easier to win. You can only attack melee to the next adjacent tile from your party, but can cast and execute ranged attack further away. You can also direct attack to any monster in specific tile without limitations, in case rules apply that you can strike to the tile. MM:X Legacy does also feature a "danger indicator", which has three levels representing whether monsters have seen you, are they just watching you out, or are they actually attacking towards your party.

Executing successful strike and dealing damage is defined by your character skills, while monsters have fixed value. Defending against a blow depends of your armor rating, evade and block values. Naturally, resisting against magical attack relies on corresponding value of magical resistance towards the school of magic which spell was used. You can either successfully resist the whole spell altogether, but if it gets through, damage depends of your spell resistance value. Monsters or their spells may curse or paralyze you, or make you weak for instance. You can use different healing and mana potions to replenish your characters, and if you've make you'd better be using buff-spells to boost your partys stats!

Loot in MM:X Legacy will be, like in previous games, randomly generated. When monster is defeated, loot is collected automatically to your inventory and XP (experience points) are divided between your party members, whereas the slayer does get some extra points for his own.

(Combat taking place in front of a fort)

Might And Magic VI-VIII were one of my all time personal favorite games ever, and I still play them time to time. I'm really, humbly, hoping Limbic Entertainment to deliver a great game, that feels like a worthy Might And Magic successor title!

AN EARLY RELEASE

Early release of Might And Magic X: Legacy is out as soon as Monday 19th of August at Steam early access games, and later on in Ubisoft's Uplay store (I was left bit unclear by Limbic's slightly messy updates whether Uplay store version is available only at the final release as boxed copy while early access is only from Steam?), but I'm not sure whether you will miss some goodies ordering "early access" through Steam (after the game is upgraded to the "digital deluxe version" after final release)? Better make sure! If the early access is upgraded to digital deluxe edition without a boxed copy, then you would need to buy the game second time, if you wanted to get the boxed copy too. No place so far states the automatic upgrade and it's content clearly enough, except that you will get the full game after the update, which is all we know so far.

Initially, you'll be able to play only Act 1 with an early access to the game, though we don't know how long phase it is. You'll be able to use four different classes out of the final product's twelve. When the game gets released, your copy will be automatically upgraded from "early access" to "digital deluxe edition". Uplay's "deluxe box version" of the final game should contain at least following items (however, once again make sure to read what you get from Steam "early access" with automatic update to "deluxe box version" if you decide to order from there):

-first DLC free
-an exclusive dungeon
-a free copy of Might And Magic VI Mandate of Heaven (physical or not??)
-a cloth map
-a soundtrack
-4 artwork litographs
-"an ultimate adventurer status" (whatever that means)-be sure to check and confirm these from the actual sellers website before buying!
-you may also want to check and take part on actual MM:X open development blog!

Update 20.08.2013 on the part of "early access" version length:"[...]There are 5 completable quests in the early access. 2 of them are optional, the others are required to progress the story. Quests in EA don't have multiple solutions, and are very much just "missions"(username Zed. Rpgcodex forums. http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-hands-on-preview-might-magic-x-legacy.85720/page-2).

There's also a Might And Magic X Legacy "Early Access" version let's play Youtube video by Gerugon in HD, which will probably give you even better image of the game (in German only). You can see the video in here!